


Funeral Shroud

by RedTeamShark



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Funeral, Gen, Grief/Mourning, MAJOR SPOILERS c2E26, Team as Family, saying goodbye
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 18:58:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15274134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedTeamShark/pseuds/RedTeamShark
Summary: It's time to say goodbye.





	Funeral Shroud

**Author's Note:**

> I crytyped this entire fic at 3am after the episode was over because I had to get THAT out of my system to continue to live.
> 
> Unedited, short, I don't care I just needed to get my emotions out.

There’s quiet. It’s almost… peaceful. Almost serene. The morning woods, so recently claimed by the sound of battle, still smelling of blood and char, settle in to quiet. A bird sings. Frumpkin, still an owl, flutters down and perches himself on Caleb’s shoulder.

He nuzzles into shaggy, sweaty hair and makes a small, inquisitive noise-- _hroo?_ \--and it breaks.

“Mollymauk!” Caleb screams, runs, slips in the grass and takes a face full of dirt. He doesn’t try to get up, he doesn’t try to move closer to the bloodied body of his… his…

His fallen comrade. His friend.

“Caleb!” Nott’s voice calls after him and she darts to his side, sets her hand on his shoulder. She’s not looking at Molly’s body. She’s not looking at anything but Caleb, shaking under her hand.

“I…” Keg pushes herself to her knees, her fists clenching in the short grass, ripping up fistfuls. “I’m sorry…”

“There is nothing we can do?” Caleb asks the dirt his face is currently pressed into. “There is… nothing?”

It’s Beau who approaches his body, Beau who kneels down and gently rests his head on her lap. She strokes his hair back from his face, slides her hands down so his eyes close. The anger she’d faced Lorenzo with has dried up, not wilted but solidified. Crystalized. They will get the others back. And for what he did to Molly… He’s going to _suffer_. “We have to… to do this right.” She searches her belts as she speaks, rips off a long strip of blue fabric and pulls out her canteen to wet it. Working methodically, shutting down her emotions. She’s done this before. “Caleb, get up. Find a good place for him. Nott, go find some flowers. Keg…” Part of the fury resurfaces, part of the blame that she can’t quite shove down. There’s plenty of it to go around. “Give me back his fucking tapestry and go help Caleb dig.”

It’s when they’re gone, when she’s alone with him, that the tears slip. The emotions fall from her eyes as the words fall from her lips. “You stupid bastard… What were you thinking, hurting yourself like that? Look where it got you…” She wipes blood from the corner of his mouth, swears for a moment that she feels his lips twitch up in an easy grin. “Oh, don’t fucking act like you’re so tough. I could have taken him and you could have… Could have… You didn’t have to die here! What am I supposed to tell Yasha?!”

There’s nothing she can do for the wound in his chest, no way to cover it with his clothing. Beau curses under her breath, reaches for one of her sashes when something else drops in front of her eyes. “Use this,” Caleb whispers, falling to his knees beside her. They work together, wrapping the scarf around his torso, a makeshift sash to hide the worst of his final injury from the world.

“Do you mind if I…?” Caleb whispers when they’re done, when Molly has been laid out on his obnoxious, overpriced tapestry. “I would like to… To speak to him…”

“Yeah… Yeah, I’ll go check on Nott…”

He sits quiet for a long while, strokes his fingers through Molly’s hair, around his horns. Adjusts the jewelry in them. Adjusts the placement of Molly’s shirt, Molly’s coat, his own scarf. Finally, Caleb exhales heavily. “You did not deserve this, Mollymauk Tealeaf… Not you, who are so kind, so willing to forgive and offer chances… You do not deserve to lie cold and still in the ground while people who have committed true evils breathe freely.” He leans in, presses the lightest kiss to a purple forehead before pressing his forehead to Molly’s, eyes closed. “I am not a man of faith, but I will ask that… that whatever may guide you onwards will bring you to the peace you deserve.”

A rustle of feathers as Frumpkin lands on his shoulder, makes another small inquisitive noise and draws his attention outwards, to where Nott stands. She’s holding an armful of flowers, a riot of colors that is so like Mollymauk it makes his chest clench up.

“We’re going to move him now, Caleb,” she whispers, joining him by Molly’s side, carefully laying the flowers along the tapestry next to him. Caleb helps her spread them out, looks up as Beau joins them again.

“Do you wish to say your farewells, Nott?” He asks quietly, his eyes on his small green friend as she adjusts the flowers near Molly’s still face.

“I’ve never… what do I say?” She looks up at him, her eyes wide, tears falling to her cheeks that she impatiently wipes away.

Keg saves him from having to answer, her words soft. “You tell him… how much he meant to you. In whatever way that was. You wish him well. You ask the Gods--his, yours, whoever might be listening--to look out for him…” She approaches the small group slowly, drops to her knees a short distance away from them. “I… I can help. Please, let me help, I--”

“I think you’ve done enough!” Nott’s words are harsh, her voice pitching upward. “We’re in this mess because you--you--you wanted some petty revenge without giving us anything close to enough information! Molly is _dead_ because you couldn’t--!”

Caleb’s hand on her pointing finger stills her words, his head shaking briefly. “There is no place to lay blame for death. Is it her fault, for what information she had being incorrect? Is it my fault, for not coming up with a better plan? Is it Beauregard’s fault? What about Jester, or Fjord, or Yasha who we were chasing after? What about yourself, Nott, still attempting to unlock cages when we should have been attempting to flee with what we had left?” He tightens his hand on hers, squeezes gently. “We will make Lorenzo pay for this. He is the one to blame and we will punish him.”

They wrap him up in the tapestry, a gaudy funeral shroud if ever there was one. Beau hesitates before she closes it over his face, looking among them. “Not to, you know, bring up the mood, but… that night, at the Pillow Trove, when you told us about… All your baggage, Caleb? He was totally having a threesome on this thing.”

“ _Ja_ , I know, I could hear him through the walls. So much giggling…”

They all take a moment, hands coming together over the last fold, shutting Molly’s face away from the sun. For just a moment, as a breeze rushes through the trees overhead, they feel something else, hear something else… Three more hands on theirs, three more voices saying goodbye for the last time. More than three, perhaps. One hand, one voice, for each of the countless lives Mollymauk Tealeaf had touched in his short time.

“Goodbye, Molly,” Nott whispers, standing first, leading the other three to the grave Keg had managed to dig. They lay him in it gently, slowly push dirt back over the still form wrapped in the tapestry. Once it’s buried they pile rocks on top, a small effort to keep the animals away.

The rest of the walk to town is quiet. None of them notice when Keg peels off from the group. None of them speak as they find an inn, drag themselves into one bed together in a group cuddle that despite the walls and blankets, doesn’t warm them up like the one Mollymauk had been in the middle of did.

\--

_This has happened before._

He jolts awake wrapped in something, smothered, tries to scream and feels an old ache in his chest. He scrambles, claws his way through dirt and rock and comes to in a forest, in fresh air and quiet morning snow. Not enough to coat the ground. Not yet.

He stumbles through the woods, cold and alone and so, so lost, wrapped in the funeral shroud he pulled out of his unmarked grave.

He finds a town and in that town he finds people who greet him with open arms, who tell him _welcome back_ and _it took you damn long enough_ and _Lorenzo will be glad to see that you’re up and about_.

And he becomes _____.


End file.
